Lloyd Grossman wrote:One of Britain's most successful and long lived avant-garde rock bands, Pink Floyd emerged relatively unsullied from the mire of mid-Sixties British psychedelic music as early experimenters with outer space concepts. Although that phase of the band's development was of short duration, Pink Floyd have from that time been the pop scene's preeminent techno-rockers: four musicians with a command of electronic instruments who wield an arsenal of sound effects with authority and finesse. While Pink Floyd's albums were hardly hot tickets in the shops, they began to attract an enormous following through their US tours. They have more recently developed a musical style capable of sustaining their dazzling and potentially overwhelming sonic wizardry.

The Dark Side of the Moon is Pink Floyd's ninth album and is a single extended piece rather than, a collection of songs. It seems to deal primarily with the fleetingness and depravity of human life, hardly the commonplace subject matter of rock. "Time" ("The time is gone the song is over"), "Money" ("Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie"). And "Us And Them" ("Forward he cried from the rear") might be viewed as the keys to understanding the meaning (if indeed there is any definite meaning) of The Dark Side of the Moon.

Even though this is a concept album, a number of the cuts can stand on their own. "Time" is a fine country-tinged rocker with a powerful guitar solo by David Gilmour and "Money" is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Dick Parry, who also contributes a wonderfully-stated, breathy solo to "Us And Them." The non-vocal "On The Run" is a standout with footsteps racing from side to side successfully eluding any number of odd malevolent rumbles and explosions only to be killed off by the clock's ticking that leads into "Time." Throughout the album the band lays down a solid framework which they embellish with synthesizers, sound effects and spoken voice tapes. The sound is lush and multi-layered while remaining clear and well-structured.

There are a few weak spots. David Gilmour's vocals are sometimes weak and lackluster and "The Great Gig in the Sky" (which closes the first side) probably could have been shortened or dispensed with, but these are really minor quibbles. The Dark Side of the Moon is a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement. There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. The Dark Side of the Moon has flash-the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.

Anthony DeCurtis wrote:Pink Floyd fans should be prepared for an exciting few months: The band announced yesterday that they are launching "Why Pink Floyd…?", a massive reissue campaign meant to deepen and expand the band's extraordinary musical legacy. "Some of the very early demo stuff from '66 is extraordinary – things we recorded in Broadhurst Gardens mainly so we could enter the Melody Maker beat competition," Floyd drummer Nick Mason told Rolling Stone. "It's extraordinary primarily because of Syd [Barrett], hearing him so crystal clear, the way he was playing, and bringing back memories of that first year, when I first met him."

In going through material for the additional CDs and DVDs, he said he found himself drawn to the tracks that emerged "from the very back of the cupboard," material that includes Barrett, the band's original singer, guitarist and songwriter.

On September 26th, a remastered Dark Side of the Moon will be released both as a six-disc "Immersion" box set, as well as a two-disc "Experience" set and a vinyl LP. Fourteen remastered Pink Floyd albums will also be released at that time, both separately and as a box set. Then, on November 7th, Wish You Were Here will be released in five-disc and two-disc versions, along with the single-disc collection, A Foot in the Door: The Best of Pink Floyd. And on February 27th, The Wall will appear in a seven-disc "Immersion" version and a three-disc "Experience" set.

The set includes a "Wish You Were Here" demo with Stephane Grappelli wailing on violin, which Mason greeted with wonder upon hearing it. "That is just fantastic," he said. "I had assumed it was lost. The incredible thing is that [classical violinist] Yehudi Menuhin was there as well, but he never went in to play, because he felt that he couldn't improvise."

Since the Sixties, of course, Pink Floyd has become an essential rite of passage for generations of music fans, a phenomenon that Mason credits, in part, to bassist Roger Waters, who emerged as the band's main songwriter in 1968, after Barrett's emotional troubles made it impossible for him to continue in the group. "I hate to say this, because Roger is insufferable already," Mason said, sighing, "but his writing is extraordinary. The lyrics to Dark Side were written by a 20-something-year-old guy, but they're relevant to a 50- or 60-year-old guy. 'Time' or any of those songs have lasted extremely well. And the music has an abstraction to it that allows people to put their own visions on it. The songs leave a lot of scope for people to use their imaginations, paint their own pictures and make it a soundtrack to their thoughts and their lives. And you're most susceptible to that when you're a teenager."

Syd Barrett died in 2006, and keyboardist Rick Wright passed away in 2008, leaving Mason (who is now 67), Waters and guitarist David Gilmour as Pink Floyd's only surviving members. Gilmour and Waters, in particular, have fought bitterly over the years, preventing, with the notable exception of a Live 8 appearance in 2005, any reunion that includes both men. Did everyone agree on the "Why Pink Floyd" project?

"To put it bluntly, Roger would prefer that we pretend that nothing ever happened with Pink Floyd after he left, so we always have that one to go through," Mason said with a laugh. "But after that, once we know what we're trying to do, we do a lot of work to be sure that we have the right mix, and it tends to be quite well done. We can be quite grown up at times!"

So, any chance of any Pink Floyd performances in the future involving all three surviving members? "There are absolutely no plans," he said immediately. "But Live 8 was fantastic. We did something for other people, but we also proved that we could all work together again. I'm really pleased that my children saw that. I would have thought that could be regenerated at some time. So I live in hope – but that's no reason to put it out on Twitter that 'Nick Says Band to Re-form!'"

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, why "Why Pink Floyd"? "I really think that this could be the last chance for really nice packaging – boxes, books, the whole thing," Mason said. "We've tried to give everyone all the various alternatives. There is Dark Side as it was recorded on vinyl, but there is also the ultimate, high-end stereo version. And there's also live performances. So now, even if we all just download from here on out, they will at least be there as a document of how it used to work. And I do think there will be people who will still be interested and who will want that."

From Rolling Stone November 19, 1987:[url]Pink Floyd: The Inside Story - Roger Waters &amp; David Gilmour talk about the battles that tore apart this legendary band[/url]

David Fricke wrote:Below is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in RS 513 November 19, 1987. This issue and the rest of the Rolling Stone archives are available via Rolling Stone Plus, Rolling Stone's premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can click here to see the full story. Not a member? Click here to learn more about Rolling Stone Plus.

They simply refused to leave. The houselights were up, and the ushers were counting the minutes before they could knock off for the night. But even after three full hours of lasers in the face, trippy sound-in-the-round, brain-frying special effects and all those Fm-radio classics — "One of These Days," "Time," "Us and Them," "Welcome to the Machine," "Comfortably Numb" — the 15,000 kids in the Montreal Forum would not budge. For nearly twenty minutes, they stood at their seats, screaming themselves hoarse, determined not to move an inch until Pink Floyd came back onstage.

That this wasn't quite the same Pink Floyd — Roger Waters, the band's bassist, singer and dominant songwriter, was absent — that had transfixed potheads in the early, spacey Seventies did not faze this audience, or the other two Sro crowds during the group's three-night stand in Montreal. Hell, they'd just seen the humongous inflatable pig from the '77 Animals tour and the crashing airplane from the old Dark Side of the Moon shows. And when the silvery chime of David Gilmour's guitar skated over Rick Wright's burbling Hammond organ and Nick Mason's heartbeat drumming in "Echoes," with Gilmour's and Wright's voices gliding together in feathery harmony, it definitely sounded like Pink Floyd. Veteran Floyd freaks had waited for this a long time, a whole decade since the full quartet's last major tour. Novices were here because of the Great Floyd Mystique, the tales of concert wonder passed down by elder brothers and old hippie uncles. And the crowd wasn't going to leave until it got one more shot.

Eventually, the Floyd relented, returning with its seven-member troupe of extra musicians and singers for a stab at "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," which they'd tested only a couple of times in rehearsal. "It was extraordinary," said Gilmour later. "The people were on their feet cheering so loudly that at a couple of points I couldn't even hear what I was playing."

"There were a few mistakes," said Wright, laughing, "but we got through it. And the song is so Floydian. It was a perfect way to end the evening." Gilmour had announced the song with peals of church-bell guitar over icy keyboards and a slow blues pulse, heightening the chill of the absent Waters's reflection on the eclipsing of genius by madness. Later, as the fans filed out, one of the big sellers at the merchandise stands was a T-shirt that said, on the front, Pink Floyd, and, on the back, Still First In Space.

Two weeks later, in the Oakland Coliseum, Roger Waters wasn't settling for second place. He didn't have the pig or the airplane. But as usual, he had a couple of heavy axes to grind, among them the threat of nuclear self-destruction and the potential of communications technology as a means to bring people together, two themes central to his latest album, Radio K.A.O.S. Not surprisingly, Waters ground those axes with the same black humor, theatrical ingenuity and apocalyptic urgency that he brought to the staging of his musical autobiography The Wall, incorporating striking computer graphics, newsreel footage of Armageddon in the making and fictional telephone exchanges between a young spastic boy named Billy and a Kaos DJ, played by real-life radio pro Jim Ladd.

But there was also a matter of honor at stake here. When Waters poignantly reprised old songs like "Welcome to the Machine," "Money" and "Another Brick in the Wall," he wasn't just doing the best of Floyd. Those were his songs, "the words and music of Roger Waters," as Ladd declared at the end of an extended Floyd medley in the first half. The implication, of course, was unmistakable: anyone else out there playing these songs, claiming to be Floyd, is bogus.

"I would be terribly happy for you to like what I'm doing and to like what he's doing," Waters said sharply the next day, referring to Gilmour, "if it wasn't for the fact that he was calling himself Pink Floyd. He isn't. If one of us was going to be called Pink Floyd, it's me." Even the old props in the current Floyd show, Waters insisted, were originally his idea. "That's my pig up there," he said. "That's my plane crashing." He snickered and added, "It's their dry ice."

The "which one's Pink?" debate has been a legal football kicked around by lawyers since last fall, when Waters sued Gilmour and Mason in an attempt to prevent them from using the name, claiming the group was "a spent force creatively." (Rick Wright, who quietly left the group in 1980 after the Wall shows, has unofficially returned for the new Floyd album and tour.) Both camps, however, have now taken their cases to the people in a vindictive press war. Floyd fans are, in a sense, getting two state-of-the-art-rock shows and records — Waters's Radio K.A.O.S., the Floyd's Momentary Lapse of Reason — for the price of one band. But the price has been disastrously high. In their fight to determine who is the rightful heir to the Pink Floyd throne and the continuing fortune it's worth, Waters, Gilmour and Mason have destroyed whatever personal friendship, band camaraderie and musical unity first bonded them two decades ago. The musicians who created The Wall are now up against a wall of their own — the one separating them from one another.

When asked about the barrage of charges and countercharges flying between the other Floyds and him, Roger Waters quotes a lyric from Don Henley's "Long Way Home": "There's three sides to every story/Yours and mine and the cold, hard truth." And in Waters v. Floyd, the cold, hard truth is that they can't stand each other. They resent what each has done to the other, what each has said publicly about the other, what each has exacted from the other emotionally, artistically and financially.

If you believe half of what Gilmour and Mason say about their former bassist, Waters is an arrogant, dictatorial egomaniac hungry for all the credit and the subsequent rewards. If you believe half of what Waters says of the surviving Floyds, they are lazy, greedy bastards hacking out a record and sleepwalking through a tour to build up a multimillion-dollar retirement nest egg using, in Waters's words, "the good will and the name Pink Floyd." It's as if they lived in parallel universes, each battling visions of the other's monstrosity.

The fans, of course, are happy to be getting any Floyd, any Waters, at all. Twenty years of reclusive media silence and infrequent tours and albums have only increased the rock public's hunger for all things Floyd. Unfortunately, the public's joy and approval can't always be heard over the din of accusations and allegations and the brittle snap of lawyers' briefcases opening and closing.

Yeah, it was the Silverdome show, and it was indeed awesome. As each song began there was this intensity as it became obvious that they weren't going to play something else. Had no idea until they finished Brain Damage and Gilmour announced "we haven't done that since 1975," that there was such a lengthy gap in complete performances of the album.

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I remember when I was a kid and a friend of mine went to a Pink Floyd concert in Montreal (I think it was the Dark Side tour) and said it was fantastic. I was thinking "Great! I'll catch them next time around."

And there was no next time - not with the full Floyd. I missed my chance and I've regretted that ever since.

Apparently last May I was in a coma or under a rock because I never heard about this.

This video is quite amazing (have to see this guy's show!) and if you're potentially as ignorant as I was about major musical milestones that happened last May, might I suggest that after clicking on the link below, you immediately click the Full Screen icon on the lower right corner of the YouTube video and just enjoy.

Yeah saw that last year (I think a link was here in the Zone somewhere). Pretty awesome, but man does Roger Waters strut around like a toolbag or what? Gilmour literally oozes talent skill and cool. Waters looks like a goofball.

so sorry wrote:Yeah saw that last year (I think a link was here in the Zone somewhere). Pretty awesome, but man does Roger Waters strut around like a toolbag or what? Gilmour literally oozes talent skill and cool. Waters looks like a goofball.

Not only that, but Waters' voice (which was never particularly good in the first place) sounds like absolute shit. On the other hand, Gilmour's voice is just as good as it was back in the day, if not better.The light/screen show looks amazing, though.And the horribly fake-sounding wind chimes needed to be turned down in the mix.

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The Vicar wrote:Gilmour gets the sweetest sounds out of his axe. He can color the sound as pretty as you like,then lay into a piercing guitar solo. In Gilmour We Trust.

Gilmour is fantastic. He probably has the best ears of any guitarist I've ever heard. He knows everything there is to know about tone. I'd rather hear one note from Gilmour than a million notes from Yngwie Malmsteen any day.

Gilmour's slow, languid playing on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is utterly gorgeous. I just melt into the furniture listening to that.

If I could play in the manner of any guitarist I wished, I'd pick Gilmour ( Hackett comes a very close second). His epic lead work on Dark Side alone guarantees his entrance into whatever passes for a musicians Valhalla. Watching him in concert with Pete Townsend was awe-inducing.

I'm sure I said it somewhere in the Zone before, but if you haven't checked out Gilmour's last album On an Island I suggest you do so posthaste. Its a little heavy on the melodramatic side, but fuck me, that guy's riffs are worth the depressing feeling you get from listening to it!

so sorry wrote:I'm sure I said it somewhere in the Zone before, but if you haven't checked out Gilmour's last album On an Island I suggest you do so posthaste. Its a little heavy on the melodramatic side, but fuck me, that guy's riffs are worth the depressing feeling you get from listening to it!

On an Island is one of the best Pink Floyd songs that wasn't.

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Graeme McMillan wrote:For some, the idea of a radio play based on a concept album from the 1970s might sound like the most archaic, unnecessary idea in the history of ideas. Despite that, the animated trailer for Darkside, Tom Stoppard's play inspired by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon still seems like science fiction that's years ahead of its time.

Talking to the BBC about the play -- which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in the United Kingdom on August 26 -- Stoppard said that Darkside isn't "the story of the album," but something that takes the classic album as a starting point, and goes forward from there. "I invented a little story in the spirit of the album, taking a cue as to what level of reality this story might be on," he explained, adding that he "was picking up emotional cues from the music" during the writing process.

The play, he said, is a "philosophical comedy" with Bill Nighy in the lead role, alongside Rufus Sewell, who plays a superhero with the wonderfully on-the-nose name of "Ethics Man." Wondering just what to expect from Darkside? Take a look at the trailer, animated by Aardman Animations. It won't necessarily give you any further information, but it'll definitely leave you wanting more.